Adobe®After Effects®
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Macintosh® OS 9.0.4/Windows® 98/2000/NT/Windows® ME version Adobe® After Effects® 5.0 An Overview of Adobe After Effects This overview introduces you to the key features of After Effects. If you’re an experienced After Effects user, you may want to scan this overview and then skip to “What’s New in After Effects 5.0.” After Effects is available in two versions. The Standard version provides the core 2D/3D compositing, ani- mation, and effects tools that motion graphics professionals, Web designers, and video professionals need. The Production Bundle version meets the needs of visual effects professionals, and includes all of the tools in the Standard Version plus additional keying, motion control, and distortion tools, audio effects, 3D channel effects, 16-bit-per-channel color, vector paint, and support for network rendering. Superior Adobe product integration After Effects features the award-winning Adobe user interface, familiar to anyone who uses Adobe Photo- shop®, Adobe Illustrator®, or Adobe Premiere®. The tabbed windows—along with Adobe’s popular tabbed palettes, similar tools, and common keyboard shortcuts—make it possible to work more efficiently and move among the programs with ease. After Effects, Premiere, and Adobe LiveMotion™ use a similar time- based interface, so moving among the applications is a snap. Productivity-boosting features such the pen tool, Align palette, rulers and guides, editing tools, and free transform mode work in After Effects just as they do in other popular Adobe products. Adobe Photoshop You can transform layered Photoshop images into animations with complete ease. Import Photoshop files as compositions one at a time or in batches. After Effects preserves layers, common layer effects, adjustment layers, alpha channels, transfer modes, vector masks, and more. You can then apply visual effects to color-correct, stylize, or manipulate each layer, and animate these layers over time. Use Photoshop paths as mask or motion points. Move easily between Photoshop and After Effects to complete your work. When you import a layered Photoshop file as a composition, After Effects retains layers and other key Photoshop settings. 2 Adobe Illustrator Want to add first-rate typography or eye-catching graphics to your motion graphics and visual effects? Simply import layered files as compositions one at a time or in batches. Choose whether After Effects preserves the layers or merges them on import. Then resize the Illustrator layers to any resolution without losing detail, and animate them with complete control. Copy paths in Illustrator and paste them in After Effects as masks or motion points. With Illustrator 9 files, you can preserve transparency and transfer modes. In addition, you can continuously rasterize Illustrator layers in both 2D and 3D. Adobe Premiere After Effects can import Premiere projects as compositions. Each video, audio, and still-image clip appears on its own layer, arranged in the correct time-based sequence in the Time Layout window. You can then manipulate these clips to create the sophisticated effects and animations best produced in After Effects. If you use the After Effects filters included with Premiere 6, those effects and their associated keyframes are also imported. In addition, you can embed a link in the After Effects movies you output so that you can use the Edit Original command in Premiere to open the original project. Adobe GoLive When creating a marker in After Effects, you can add a URL link that will be embedded in rendered movies. When these movies are included in Web pages created by applications such as Adobe GoLive®, the embedded URL is recognized during playback, initiating a jump to the specified URL. You can even target a specific frame within the Web page. Adobe LiveMotion Create elaborate animations in After Effects and then import them into LiveMotion as Macromedia Flash files. After Effects and LiveMotion use a similar time-based interface, so moving between the two applica- tions is easy. Powerful masking Extensive masking capabilities give you extraordinary control in After Effects. You can create, edit, and animate as many as 127 masks on every layer. Draw paths to create transparencies or to add new objects to an animation, such as stroked lines—even animate text along a mask path. Combine paths to make unusual shapes using Boolean operations such as Add, Subtract, and Intersect. Rotate and scale masks, and apply opacity settings to make masks appear and disappear over time. Lock masks to protect them from change. You can even copy and paste masks into your compositions from Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. After Effects 5 allows multiple masks per layer; you can edit masks in the Composition window or in Layer windows. 3 2D & 3D compositing You can work in either 2D or 3D, or mix and match on a layer-by-layer basis. Use the 3D Layer switch to toggle a layer between 2D and 3D at any time. While both types of layers can move horizontally or verti- cally, 3D layers can also animate numerous properties—such as z-position, xyz-rotation, and orien- tation—in 3D space while interacting with lights, shadows, and cameras. Choose a light type to create a specific look. For example, spot lights provide dramatic lighting effects by pointing a cone of light at the point you define. Unparalleled shadow controls determine whether lights cast shadows when they interact with other layers. Create as many lights as you need, and then adjust and animate each light’s properties, controlling its shadow and illumination. Create as many cameras as you need to produce the results you envision. Enable a Depth of Field setting to automatically change camera focus between foreground and background infor- mation. You can then animate camera properties such as zoom and focal length, move cameras in space, and cut between cameras. Animate layers, cameras, and lights in 3D space. Extensive motion controls For impeccable animations, rely on the powerful motion controls in After Effects. Instantly stagger selected layers over a timeframe with the Sequence Layers Keyframe Assistant. Then add unlimited keyframes to animate any layer attribute, including position, rotation, scale, anchor point, and opacity. Position your layers with subpixel accuracy. Refine the look and movement of your motion paths using roving keyframes. When animating static images, apply Motion Blur to create more realistic movement. Use Time Remapping to make frames stutter, play backwards, move in slow motion, or freeze. Create sophisticated animations by defining a parent-child relationship between layers. Use expressions to define relationships between param- eters so that you can create procedural-type animations without using keyframes. Keyframes Animate layers by setting keyframes for the layer’s properties at different points in time. Keyframes mark the point in time where you’ve set layer property values. For example, if you want a layer to expand as the clip plays, you would set two or more keyframes containing different scale property values. 4 Motion Sketch and Smoother Draw animation paths as easily as sketching with a pencil on paper using the Motion Sketch tool. Simply select the tool and draw the animation path on-screen. Adjust your drawing speed to vary the velocity of the path. After Effects automatically creates the keyframes for you. Then use the Smoother tool to smooth the shape of the path and fine-tune it until the animation moves exactly as you want. Leading-edge video and audio effects After Effects delivers powerful, precise tools for creating a limitless range of visual and audio effects. You can stylize, enhance, and manipulate layers using a wide array of effects plug-ins; categories include Blur & Sharpen, Channel manipulation, Distortion, Keying, Perspective, Render, Stylize, Transition, and Audio. Apply an unlimited number of visual effects to every layer, and animate every control. Save your most fre- quently used effects (including keyframes) as Favorites, which you can apply instantly and share with col- leagues. Expand your effects toolkit even further with numerous third-party plug-ins. Use the Path Text effect to move text along a Bezier path and animate text attributes such as tracking. In addition to applying a number of audio effects to your footage files, you can change the volume levels of audio layers, preview them at a specified quality, and identify and mark locations. Use the familiar Audio palette to set the volume levels of an audio level, or use the Timeline window to view the waveform values and apply time remapping. Flexible media handling Take advantage of previewing capabilities in After Effects to see results as you work, instead of waiting to render movies. With RAM preview, dynamic preview, intelligent caching, and other preview enhance- ments, you can specify the quality and speed of your playback to maximize efficiency. When you’re ready to convert your final composition for playback on the medium of your choice, use the versatile Render Queue to render the composition into a finished movie. If you’re using the Production Bundle version, you can render using a network of computers. 5 RAM Preview One of the big challenges in designing motion graphics and visual effects is imagining how they will look in their final form. Playback controls help, but they don’t really capture the final experience. That’s what makes the RAM Preview feature so exciting. You can play back your compositions in real time without having to render them. You can even preview audio along with the video. If you like the segment that you played back in RAM Preview, you can save it to a file directly. RAM Preview lets you play a preview at the frame rate of your composition, or as fast as your system allows.